How did a competitor achieve annual sales of 12 million USD with zero advertising? What was the operation method? Here is what I learned...

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• First: Annual sales of 12 million US dollars

  
  

• Second: Advertising situation: The store s*f checked and found that there was almost no in-site advertising throughout the year, and no advertising promotion for new products. Later, someone analyzed the store's advertising expenses for the whole year, which accounted for 2% of sales, which means that there were about 240,000 in-site advertising expenses a year.

  
  

• Third: Price: The price of the store's products is 2-3 USD higher than similar products. It is not a low price, including the new products that have just been put on the shelves, which are also 2-3 USD higher than similar products.

  
  

• Fourth: Have your own independent website
   
  

What is the operation method of the store? Why is the sales volume still very stable when the price of the entire store is higher than that of similar competing products even though the traffic on the site is so low?

I implore you to have a detailed operational promotion analysis, detailing how competitors promote.
 
The following is the information I learned:
First: s*f checks the traffic situation in the site --- the top 10 asins

I checked the entire store with s*f. The store's top asin, including the middle and tail asin, had almost no advertising throughout the year. Later, I asked someone to analyze the store's annual advertising expenses, which accounted for 2% of sales, that is, there were about 240,000 in-site advertising expenses a year. Could it be that all the advertising expenses were spent on SD advertising? (Except for SD advertising, s*f cannot capture other advertisements, so other advertisements should be able to capture traffic words)

(Pictures from community users)

Second: The new ASINs that have been launched recently also have no advertising traffic and are not low-priced, but sales are also steadily increasing.

(Pictures from community users)

Third: The keyword position of the top product. Taking an old product as an example: the keywords are almost always inaccurate.

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"Wonderful Reply"

Anonymous user

Endorsed by: COCONINI

1.B083L8ZGRK This is his typical head link, there is a special phenomenon worth noting:

(Pictures from community users)

From August 2023 to January 2024, this link was not selling well, the ranking continued to decline, and the store had to reduce the price (19.99-13.99)

According to the time period when the ranking dropped, we analyze the changes in its traffic structure:
This link continued to decline from April to August 2024, and began to plummet in August. During the period of decline, AC recommended traffic and natural traffic basically fell in equal proportion. When the AC traffic returned to 0, its natural traffic also fell to the lowest value in history.

(Pictures from community users)

In other words, 90% of the traffic of this link comes from AC referral traffic. With the support of AC referral traffic, it brings continuous referral traffic to the link, which is converted into orders, and the number of conversions and sales increase continuously, which promotes the growth of the link's keyword search ranking.

(Pictures from community users)

It can be seen that after January, this link began to recover its ranking, and at the same time, the keyword search ranking also resumed growth.

(Pictures from community users)

You can check out another header link in its store that has the same features.
Moreover, the traffic fluctuations of these products seem to be very seasonal.

So there is a very clear logical relationship here. As ordinary sellers, we use SP advertising traffic to increase link conversions, increase sales, and then promote keyword ranking growth.

This seller uses AC recommended traffic to increase link conversions, sales, and keyword search rankings, which is equivalent to replacing SP paid traffic with free AC recommended traffic.

This can explain why this store has such a low average order value and why its advertising expenditure is also so low.
In summary, the characteristics of this store are: high conversion rate, low advertising investment, and high free referral traffic. Therefore, the cost of this store is low, but the traffic is still high, the ranking is stable, and the sales volume is stable.

The AC recommendation mainly considers:
1. Link conversion rate
2. Link Click Rate
3. Link conversions

When the other party's link has no advertisements, it can still obtain a good conversion rate, click-through rate, and conversion times. This is either because the free review artificially creates data to obtain the AC mark, or the keyword software is on the homepage, simulating click and add-to-cart data, greatly increasing the link click rate, add-to-cart rate, and times, so that the system determines that the link is popular and gives a large amount of AC recommendation traffic exposure. Or it is software keyword ranking + brushing free review.

Vae - advertising, refined operations. Official account: VAE Operations Enjoyment Circle

Since 2023, new links with the following characteristics have appeared in many categories:

1. The proportion of natural traffic is very high (90%+)
2. No or less advertising
3. Most of them have no traces outside the site
4. The ranking of natural keywords suddenly rises and remains stable in the top few (including big keywords)
5. Natural keywords are ranked at the top of the homepage (usually the top few on the homepage)

This seller's product category is not vertical, which means that the brand's influence in various channels may be relatively limited (but after all, it is an old seller, so it may still have influence). The annual sales volume is 12 million US dollars, and many products have a high organic share, which means that their product promotion also tends to be SOP templated (it's not like different products have different promotion strategies and different advertising shares).

Take B0BM51BZKH as an example. This product has relatively few reviews and has been on the shelves for a long time. The traffic structure is basically all natural traffic, and the big keywords are ranked very high naturally, and there are no advertisements.

There are a few interesting points:
1. The word "St Patricks Day party favors" suddenly ranked in February, and there was no advertising during that period (it suddenly rose to the first place among the ABA 3w big words)

2. All competing products of the same category have advertisements (this means that they are not categories that rely solely on natural traffic to rank)

3. There are very few reviews after one year of listing, only 4 reviews (the rest are ratings). Is this review really strong enough to be an S-order and boost rankings? Is it really necessary to invest so much effort in boosting rankings for old products? If there are such resources, is the upper limit of the product? --- Another possibility is that the seller has restricted reviews through some technical means, which cannot be verified for the time being.

(Pictures from community users)

Amazon link BSR ranking must depend on sales. The natural traffic of new products in the early stage is very low (this is not a problem that can be solved by embedding keywords and copywriting). The product has achieved so much sales as soon as it is launched on the shelves, and the natural keyword ranking is high. This is a result. We all know that on-site search traffic is a very important source of traffic.

Conversely deduce:
1. This keyword has a large number of orders
2. Use keywords to get on the homepage software

There are three ways to achieve such ranking and sales:
1. Off-site
2. Brush D
3. After the keyword ranking is improved, the order volume will increase in turn

The first "off-site" effect, which we are also working on, basically needs to be maintained for more than 2 weeks to have a relatively good effect on keyword rankings (and for some big words, the effect is still relatively low). And there is no obvious track at present. For private domain traffic, you can check it in these two ways:

A. Go to Facebook and search for brand/brand+keywords to see if your competitors have their own private groups. Some are private groups created by the brands themselves, while others are private groups created by buyers themselves.

B. Look at the reviews of competing products, or buy a sample of a competing product to see if there is any private domain activity. I personally think the possibility of private domain is not high, because if they already have this private domain, why wait until now to increase the ranking?

The second "brushing D", as analyzed above, is unlikely. In summary, I think the probability of keywords being on the homepage is still relatively high. Regarding the small proportion of advertising, new products quickly rush to the front of the category, and the keywords naturally rank very high. You can see this post I analyzed: https://www.wearesellers.com/question/87955

Anonymous user

First of all, the entire store has a large number of products, but it does not put goods on the shelves blindly. It has been deeply involved in the category for many years and has a steady rhythm of putting products on the shelves.
The listing writing style is unified and standardized, with a large number of long-tail words embedded. Every operation of this seller is carefully designed and conversion-oriented.

Sell ​​products on all platforms: AliExpress, eBay, Walmart...

Products are mainly promoted off-site, and independent sites, Pinterest, etc. are all for Amazon traffic:

(Pictures from community users)

Off-site deals:

(Pictures from community users)

In-site advertising, low budget and low bidding, reduce exposure and increase conversion:

(Pictures from community users)

Finally, let’s talk about pricing. If you don’t have a deep understanding of the product industry, you can’t grasp the core selling point of the product. This is very critical and needs to be studied in depth. Judging from the analysis results of the original poster, the selling price is usually 2-3 US dollars higher. If this pricing method can be maintained in a positive cycle structure, it will be difficult for competitors to surpass it. This is exactly what Amazon wants. Obviously, the seller knows Amazon’s preferences very well, and also grasps the needs and preferences of buyers, and presents the product in a targeted manner. I wish you a big sale!

hbzhong

A large portion of the traffic for this type of product may come from links in the brand flagship store, brand stories, and old ASIN A+ section.

1. In the brand flagship store, you can clearly see that new products are placed at the front of the page, and older links are at the bottom.
2. Consumers of this type of product are willing to spend time in the store to choose their favorite styles.
3. The sales volume of new products does not increase very quickly. They are sold at low prices when they are first put on the shelves. After they become stable, the prices are slightly increased, with the main goal of steady progress.

SD ads are very likely.
If other natural channel traffic is sufficient, and there are no very high requirements for sales volume and the pace of new products, then saving some advertising costs and pushing forward steadily is also a good choice.

Sunny Old Boy

1: Product and category analysis: The overall sales volume of this category is good, and there is not much competition. There is no serious polarization in sales volume. It ranks around the TOP100, and an average of 30 orders per day is no problem.
2: Product attributes; few keywords. The traffic word artificial plants is divided into indoor and outdoor, and there are not many keywords that can be expanded.
3: Nature of the seller; many similar products. Familiar with this category
4: New product analysis: Overall, there are not many new products on the shelves, and the competition is not great.
5: If the products you choose are good, and you can get more than 30 orders a day, it will definitely take less than a month.
6: Make outdoor artificial plants in the first half of the year and indoor artificial plants in the second half of the year
7: The keywords are rather messy because the weight of old links is used in the promotion to bring in new ones.
Summary: This category is worth entering, and it is relatively easy to make a little money.

Jack's cross-border journey - 10 years of cross-border experience, proficient in cross-border operations and growth

For the store analyzed by the OP, an annual sales of 12 million US dollars is already a top store and should have a mature operation team and gameplay.
As for the doubtful question, how can one become a leader without advertising?
In fact, for mature stores and mature products, natural orders account for a very high proportion. The current advertising data can be found through software, which does not mean that there will be no advertising when the store is new or the product is new.
During this stage, even if he launches new products, the store will give him a lot of related recommendations.